


∆G<0

by erzi



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 10:00:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20776712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erzi/pseuds/erzi
Summary: There is an unfamiliar heat blooming where Lio's heart is. It comes and goes as it pleases. This is a different kind of burning.He looks away, to anything. It's a building, one of the battle's survivors. Its windows cast the sunlight to diamonds. But they are reflections; none of that light, dazzling while never blinding, is created by the glass. It is taking something extant for its own. Bettering it.





	∆G<0

The afternoon sun stares the city down with its singular eye, poised perfectly in the cloudless sky's meridian. Its light skitters down in a line of fractals that moves with Lio's own eyes, defiant in meeting that which can burn him.

He flicks his hand up, quicker than gasoline's combustion, to blot out the sun. His vision: his shadowed hand, in a glowing outline, holding back endless blue. He sees this and only this and then slowly he does not, moving his hand as if to cradle the sun. Like it had risen from his palm; like this is not a distant star but his own will condensed to spherical heat.

But there's no more of that.

"Lio!"

Wavering hand, fixed sun. Chin tucked to shoulder. His new vision: Galo, whose voice had sounded far, but he must have been approaching because here he is, standing behind Lio, now grabbing him by the wrist – not unkindly – and twirling him around. The sun is behind them but its shadow dances wherever Lio looks.

"You shouldn't be looking at the sun!" Galo says as Lio blinks the stubborn spots away. "It can blind you!"

"I'm aware," he replies, squinting – not that he is affronted by Galo's unhelpful obvious remark, but that maybe it will make the spots fade the sooner. "I was just thinking."

"Are ya done? We need to get back." He motions with his head to the clean-up effort they're part of. His hand is still around Lio's. It's warm, that hand.

Lio is warmer. His fingers curl as paper will when burned. And he has no reason to be, not anymore.

"Right," he says.

Galo grins and lets him go. "Off we go!" he says, running to the debris.

"It's not going anywhere," Lio calls out after him, but the idiot doesn't hear; he's already putting back on his thick gloves, exuberantly tossing old parts of the building that here had pierced the sky into a bucket, too energetic to be part of the slow-but-steady queue of volunteers passing filled buckets. Lio laughs – from his nose, undignified, with his mouth scrunched up like that would have stopped the noise from coming out, and instead it worsens it.

He clears his throat free of the laugh and follows Galo, thankful he hadn't heard him. He's given his own gloves and bucket and not-so-subtly reminded to keep close to Galo. This is his judgment: pardoned of his crimes if he and his people assist in rebuilding Promepolis, with oversight by a city employee – and who but Galo Thymos, the firefighter hero who'd fought alongside him, could better serve the role?

Honestly, many others could. Watching Galo, Lio suppresses another laugh from how frenziedly he works. Steel and wood and glass tossed in arc after arc. So absorbed is Galo in it he hardly minds Lio.

Though he had noticed him straying off to catch the sun, hadn't he? Perhaps in Galo's own way, he watches him-

Oh, _there_. Corner-of-the-eye glances flung to him as the items Galo has thrown make their tinny landing. Checking the bucket is filled, checking Lio is there. It had been quick, but it had been about as discreet as arson. No one says anything of it, though. Maybe it is politeness? It certainly cannot be obliviousness.

Arc, landing, glance. Grab item; arc, landing, glance. Again and again as he shouts to cheer himself and the other amused volunteers on.

Maybe it is as simple as it being Galo.

Lio shakes his head, fiercely, hair whipping his skin; he has to brush it aside to see.

"'No' what?" asks Galo, because of course he'd seen that.

"I didn't say anything."

"Well, no, but you shook your head. Or was it a mosquito bugging you?" Inexplicably, his cheer falters. "Do those bite you more now that you're not- you know?"

Yes, he does know. Truth in the mindless little tic. A lifetime of bearing a flame to have it smothered by his own hand. Until recently, he had never known of any other life, and this adjustment feels like he's donned a stranger's skin.

He does not regret what he and Galo had done, not in the slightest. But even he, condemned as he'd been, can surely mourn his flames that he'd fought for, snuffed forever. Now he too must be satisfied with sunlight; now he too must use matchsticks to start his fires.

Galo's glove madly waving in front of him, a breeze on his bangs. It returns Lio to his senses.

"Mosquitoes do flock to us more, yeah," he says, belatedly. Belatedly too does he note there are no more sun afterimages following him. "They're annoying."

"Aren't they?!"

"I-" Lio starts, and does not finish: _I'm not sure how you can handle them_. He's going to learn that himself. Galo would have taken the question at face-value, anyway, and Lio can picture his response: _I just brave 'em!_ As he does everything.

Galo tilts his head to the side, eyes like innocence, curve of his mouth something even purer than that. "Hmm?"

Of course he'd also heard that.

There is an unfamiliar heat blooming where Lio's heart is. It comes and goes as it pleases. This is a different kind of burning.

He looks away, to anything. It's a building, one of the battle's survivors. Its windows cast the sunlight to diamonds. But they are reflections; none of that light, dazzling while never blinding, is created by the glass. It is taking something extant for its own. Bettering it.

Flashbacks on those window panes, visible only to Lio's eyes, as they flit faster than light but as bright in memory as they'd been in life. An encounter as rivals – once, twice, but a tempering at the second with exposure to truth; an interruption by ice quelling hellfire; a journey that had fated them together and then so fused and then been brought to life by a kiss.

Lio is looking back in front of him and Galo has invaded his space again. His arms are crossed, leaning down with his frowning forehead just shy of Lio's.

"You're getting awfully distracted, Lio," he says. "Are you..."

Upset by what he's lost? Hopeful for what he can gain? Galo's forehead is not touching his, but it certainly feels that way; warmth is rising from under his own skin as much as it is outside it.

"...hungry?"

"No," Lio says. Snaps, rather. Just as that new heat in him snaps to extinction. How Galo can be so observant and then bluster to the wrong conclusions is a mystery. He turns his head aside, bangs brushing Galo's.

And then Galo really is pressing his forehead to his, humming in distrust, leaning further forward as if in another kiss-

And then Lio is speaking with the unstoppable energy of a fire fed wood. "Are you going to get back to work, or are you going to kiss me out of nowhere again?"

Foolish words. Capricious, spurred by a spark lit by Galo's mere presence.

What is interesting is that these words do not fly over Galo's head. They hit him, right in his eyes grown wide, and he scurries away like Lio had breathed out fire.

"It wasn't out of nowhere!" he cries, a tea kettle boiling. "You were dying! I'm sorry I couldn't ask for your permission!" Ah, but. Is there a touch of that nonexistent fire itself on his face? They have been working under the sun for a while and bear its mark on their skin; it could be that. But...

Lio lifts his mouth to a small smile. "It's fine. Let's work, come on."

But it'd be nice if it wasn't the sun.

Galo nods carefully, jogging back to him. He is quiet for all of three seconds, accentuated by six of Lio's heartbeats frantic at twice time's crawl. What slices the silence: "You miss it?"

Lio, bent over to move a stone out of the way, picks his head up to look at Galo.

"You know, the _whoosh_ and _fwoom_ of making fire," Galo says, gesturing wildly, like Lio needed clarification.

Despite the loss still raw as a blister, he finds smiling easy. "I do, but I – and the others – will be alright." His smile flickers out in time to the sun sending light between buildings and rubble. If Lio walks about, if he takes but a step to either side, the light changes angles as if alive. "The physical manifestation of our fire is extinguished, but not our will. That, for us, is enough to live."

Galo's laugh bounces brightly off a half-complete skyscraper's glass panes. The sun strikes at that same spot, and combined in that visible echo are all the colors of the rainbow. "No wonder you were their boss! You sure know how to hype people up, Lio! My own soul's fire is burning like crazy right now!"

"Is it?" he asks, absentmindedly putting his hand on his neck, with his fingers pressing down on his pulse point, and it's picked up speed; it's skipping like a broken record. That had sounded a bit like something Galo would blurt.

With a fist, he thumps his chest, over his heart. "It always is when you're around, but your words just now really moved me!"

How can he say these things? Too honest. Too thoughtless, because how can he not realize how they kindle Lio? Galo is supposed to put out fires, not be responsible for starting them without even being aware of it. The nerve, the gall.

The memory blasts him like hot air, the very air given to him by Galo's lungs with the fire Lio had sundered to protect him. This fire in Lio is not the first that Galo has started. It is the natural growth of the original born from his soul, lent, and returned – where Galo had said as much, that it had been the first time the fire had controlled him instead.

Does he-?

No. Galo can't like him back. He would have said something of it in his embarrassingly genuine boisterousness.

Unless.

"What do you mean," Lio says, "your soul's fire is always burning when I'm around?"

Galo blinks at him. "It means exactly what I said. What was confusing about it?"

Unless he doesn't even realize how he feels, and these things he says are more conscious of his heart than his own self.

"Does anything else make that happen?" Lio asks, setting his bucket down, putting a gloved hand on his hip.

"My job!" Galo pauses, raising his arm – bucket held through it – as he taps his chin. "No, they're kind of different, now that I think about it."

"How so?"

"I get pumped up knowing I saved someone 'cause it's something I did, but when I see you, it's that you're there that makes me happy. I don't have to do anything at all for the fire to blaze. It's all you."

Lio's blood is coursing through him so fast it chars his vessels. But his face is perfect composure. "So you like being around me?"

"Obviously!"

"What about other people you like being around? Does that feeling happen then?"

"Nope! It's just with you," Galo says, grinning with the might of the sun at his back.

Lio looks at him, patiently and purposefully, much as a magnifying glass held long under that very sun could elicit smoke from the ground, because the feeling is absolutely, flabbergastingly mutual and Galo is dumber than he thought.

"Wait!" Galo says, loud and sharp and wide-eyed.

And Lio's eyes widen too, because is he finally-

"We keep talking and avoiding work!" He musses the top of Lio's hair. "Don't think I don't see what you're up to, Lio!" He holds up his bucket. "We got plenty more of these guys to fill up."

Incredibly, breathtakingly dumber than Lio had thought.

One more push. Figurative, because Lio presses his hands firmly to Galo's cheeks, tugging him down to his height, his bucket clamoring down. "Galo," he says.

"Hmm?"

"If you had to describe what you feel about me in a way unrelated to fire, what would it be?"

"Uh." His eyes swing up as he thinks, searching for an answer in the sincerity of the cloudless sky.

And think, for once, he does.

"Wait!" Galo says, all of his energy exploding at once in his voice and under his reddening skin. "Wait-wait-wait-wait-_wait_! Lio, do I like you? Like... _like_-like you?"

Finally. He breathes out in sweet relief, and in there too is a laugh. "I think you do."

"Don't laugh at me! I just told you I liked you!"

"Not really. You made it a question."

"Ah, crap. I did, didn't I?" He claps his hands over Lio's, expression set. "Can I try again?"

Lio nods because if he speaks Galo will see the fire drying out his throat.

Galo beams, and in his radiance Lio would believe he's swallowed the sun. "I like you, Lio!"

"I like you too, Galo," he says, the only thing he can say with everything in its place.

His mouth drops. "Is that why you were okay with me kissing you?"

Lio's reply is a smile that could set the whole of the city afire.

Galo laughs, fingers steadfast around Lio's hands that he brings to his chest, warm without his fire ever lost. "Can I do it again?"

And Lio's smile would make tinder of the world.

**Author's Note:**

> the title is Not gibberish! it's read as 'delta g is less than zero'
> 
> in thermodynamics, G measures the amount of energy w/i a system available to do work, and it can be found via the equation ΔG=ΔH-TΔS where H is heat, T is temperature, and S is entropy; the triangles (greek letter 'delta') simply indicate a change w/i that measurement 
> 
> when H is negative (ie heat is released) and S is positive (ie the system is highly disordered), conditions are said to be favorable for the reaction to proceed – which it will do. overall G will be negative, so it will be less than zero, and the reaction is said to be spontaneous. [here's](https://www.chem.tamu.edu/class/fyp/stone/tutorialnotefiles/thermo/gibbs.htm) a good page explaining thermo, in case some rando's fic note isn't academic enough. finally my degree helps me in my gay fic metaphors


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